Need to quiz candidates

As the midterm election heats up, candidates from all three parties (Republicans, Democrats and Reform) bombard our ears with assorted slogans and promises. It’s nothing new although it pays to listen to your conscience in determining the single most important qualification of candidates: wealth and jobs creation. This is the most important agenda for leadership in the first year of the next millennium.

Lessons of the Japan and Asian economic crisis teaches us that without a healthy economy, revenue generation takes a quick slide and right into the abyss of bankruptcy. It translates into less money in the public coffers to pay for essential public services. The job market also shrinks as a result of the economic contraction.
We’re basically helpless!

If you recall, it was 16 years ago that the last major investment descended on these isles. Guess what it was: apparel manufacturing. It remains the sturdiest investment to date given the plunge of the tourism industry since three years ago. It’s ironic that for all the negative publicity and reactionary measures taken against it from within and without, it remains the strongest sector in sustaining the local coffers and allowing more than 3,000 workers to bring home the bacon, so to speak.

Tourism will never be the same as in the Bubble Years. Our largest investor, Japan, is undergoing major economic reforms to stay afloat. It’s a complex issue to the extent that she now finds it necessary to adjust the fire so she doesn’t burn the fish on the grill. We do not delight in the dilemma or difficulty that Japan is in today. After all, it remains not only our major investor but what happens in its recovery efforts would definitely affect the NMI.

It stands to reason, therefore, that the next group of policymakers would have to have an inkling of basic economics and the vision to implement proactive measures to reboot expansion of current investments, in addition to repealing strangling regulations to encourage future investments. Lest we forget, the public sector (government) is never in the business of making a profit. Such is the natural purview of the private sector and unless we grant them both hands to work with, positive revenue generation for essential public services would be next to impossible to attain.

The number of high school graduates who leave campus annually increases every year. They need jobs. But they won’t find meaningful employment unless we allow expansion of current investments and set the stage for future investments to set-in. Both expansion and future investments are hard to attain given the myriad of strangling regulations that we’ve placed on the very sector whose business is wealth and jobs creation.

The very crisis that the NMI finds itself in today ought to be a hard lesson of our long history of treating government as our holy grail for all our needs. Government can only dispose of our taxes in the most prudent way it sees fit. But it can’t move anywhere if there aren’t any revenues (wealth creation) to support its functions.

Therefore, it becomes a challenge for voters to think beyond conventional view when casting their votes this November. Review from among the list of candidates who really understands the dire need for wealth and jobs creation. You can make a difference! Si Yuus Maase`!